by James Axler
Taking the weapon, Ryan saw that he was lying on a clean blanket draped over a pile of straw. The makeshift bed was inside a big wooden buckboard wag that had a patched canvas tent stretched over iron hoops, affording a lot of room inside. The other companions were nearby, also lying on piles of straw and blankets. Their boots had been removed, but they were placed next to each person, along with their backpacks and weapons.
Okay, not prisoners, Ryan realized, checking the SIG-Sauer for any tampering.
The weapon was fine, but he was covered with scabs and bruises, some of them turning the most glorious shades of green. The minor injuries were already half healed. Just how long had he been unconscious?
The rest of the wag was filled with an assortment of wicker boxes and wooden barrels. Strapping on his gunbelt, Ryan listened for any conversations, but there was only the gentle murmur of the wind, the crackle of a fire and the muffled noise of horses snorting. This sounded like a campsite.
Rummaging around, he easily found the Steyr and both of his bandoliers. Whoever these people were, he owed them a tremendous debt. When the companions hit the lake, all he remembered was Doc’s last words, and then trying to reach the light overhead, his lungs aching to drag a breath while he was under water.
Shuffled to the rear of the wag, Ryan kept a hand on the holstered handblaster. The buckboard containing the companions was just one of several forming an arc around the remains of a large campfire. Big logs burned through in the middle, but the ends remained untouched. Clearly, a cook fire had been made, and then abandoned. Curious.
There was a score of oxen contentedly eating grass in a nearby field, and a dozen horses tethered to a running line between a couple of large trees. Ox to haul the wag, horses for riders. Ryan felt a chill go down his back. Nobody sane would attack a camp, and leave a valuable prize like these trained animals behind.
Just then, somebody in the wag coughed and rose from his or her bed.
It was Krysty.
Ryan smiled. He was immensely pleased to see that she appeared fine, just decorated with a variety of bruises and scrapes as colorful as his own. More importantly, all of her clothing was intact, and in the proper order. She hadn’t been harmed in any way.
Stiffly moving forward, Krysty looked across the deserted campsite. “What happened, lover?” she whispered, a hand resting on the S&W blaster tucked into her belt.
“I don’t know,” Ryan said honestly. “But my best guess would be that some travelers gave us shelter and then...” He shrugged.
Frowning deeply, Krysty went back to her bed and started pulling on her cowboy boots. “Where are the rapid-fires?”
“Over here,” Ryan said, gesturing to a wicker hamper filled with their assault rifles, magazines and loose ammunition. Everything was in fine condition, and the longblaster appeared to have been thoroughly cleaned and oil.
“At least we weren’t jacked,” Krysty said, reclaiming her weapon. “Or anything else.”
“Good to know,” Ryan said, and pulled her close for a fast kiss. It lasted longer than expected.
“Ahem! I see we’re not prisoners of anybody this time,” Mildred asked, sitting upright and brushing her beaded plaits off her face.
“Honored guests would be more like it,” Krysty said, standing at the mouth of the wag, one hand on a curved wooden rib. “Only our hosts seem to have vanished.”
“Trap?” Jak growled suspiciously. The young man almost seemed alien in just pants and shirt. His camouflage jacket hung from a peg in one of the wooden ribs holding up the tent.
“Funny kind of trap where you heal the prisoners, and arm them.” J.B. snorted, pulling on his glasses.
“Just because we have blasters,” Doc rumbled, “does not mean that we are armed, John Barrymore.”
Realizing the brutal sense of that statement, Ryan quickly field-stripped the SIG-Sauer to check for any missing parts, or blockage in the barrel. But the weapon was in perfect condition. Remarkably so, considering it had gone swimming with him in that icy lake.
As an experiment, Ryan aimed at a distant tree and squeezed the trigger. The gun softly coughed, the baffled suppressor working, and an old bird’s nest exploded into a hundred pieces.
“We’re armed,” Ryan stated, holstering the blaster.
“Wonder how long we’ve been out?” Ricky said, glancing outside. “There’s no sign of any lake in the area that I can see.”
“Days, mebbe longer,” Ryan said, thoughtfully scratching a cheek. Fireblast, he thought, had somebody shaved him?
“Must of stunk worse stickie,” Jak said, slipping on his jacket. “Everything washed. Hope no one hurt by razor in collar.”
“Even my wounded leg has been tended,” Doc said, gently fingering the area. “The hole in my pants has been patched, and I can feel a bandage underneath the cloth.”
“Better let me see,” Mildred commanded, grabbing her medical bag. “Get them off.”
“Really now, madam,” he huffed. “I feel fine.”
“Drop your pants, Doc!”
Muttering under his breath, Doc stood and undid his belt—which had been restored to its proper place—to let his pants fall to his ankles.
Leaning close to his thigh, Mildred inspected the white cloth bandage, then ripped it off without a warning. Caught off guard, Doc used a four-letter word that most of the gentlemen from his time normally pretended didn’t even exist.
“Beautiful,” Mildred said, running her fingertips across his skin.
“Madam, please!”
“I meant the needlework.” She laughed, looking upward. “Whoever stitched your wound closed did an excellent job. This was done by a pro with a nice tight hand.”
“May I get dressed?”
“With all due haste,” Mildred said, turning away. “I’ll just pretend that’s a morning glory, and you weren’t getting fresh.”
Utterly mortified, Doc glanced down to see it wasn’t true, and made an inarticulate noise. “Most amusing,” he growled, pulling up his pants. “Your career in vaudeville remains intact.”
She grinned. “Thanks, I’ll be here all week. Try a waitress, they’re delicious.”
Warily, everybody checked themselves over and found only the expected collection of bruises and scrapes, expected from the long battle in the mountains.
“Half healed,” Jak said, scowling at a greenish bruise. “How long?”
“Four days,” Mildred stated. “And they used some sort of a liniment on us to ease the pain.”
“Damn!”
“Well said. If nothing else, I want a bottle of that for us.”
Gathering their weapons, the companions next descended upon the stores of food. Their own supplies were present, along with a lot of dried kelp, smoked fish, jerked fish, salted fish in pepper sauce, fish sausage, and loaves of bread with tiny pieces of fish and kelp cooked inside.
“I think our hosts live near water,” J.B. said, ripping off a chunk of the bread and swallowing it nearly unchewed.
“That much is certain,” Ryan said, gnawing on a piece of acorn bread. “It would also explain how they found us in that lake.”
“Cold,” Jak said with a shiver.
“Like the heart of a baron,” Doc rumbled in agreement, nibbling on a smoked trout.
“So where are they now?” Krysty mumbled around a mouthful of kelp, her hair expanding and curling. “Our hosts, I mean. Makes no sense to patch us up, then abandon us in the middle of nowhere.”
Nobody spoke for a few minutes, and the question hung heavy in the air. Outside the wag, the warm wind ruffled through the trees, carrying the smell of green growing plants. Softly, thunder rumbled, warning of an approaching storm.
“Well, I’m damned glad nobody suggested just taking the wagons and leaving,” Mildred sighed,
screwing the cap back on a canteen.
“Can’t steal from friends” Jak stated, cutting a slice of cheese from a large wheel. “Even those don’t know.”
“Well said, Mr. Lauren!” Doc exhorted, smiling proudly at the young man. “The Bard himself could not have put it more succinctly.”
“We must be far away from that snow,” Ricky smiled, wiping his mouth on a sleeve. “I can’t even see any mountains in the distance!”
“I can,” Krysty said, squinting at the horizon. “But they are very far away, past that forest. A week or mebbe more on foot.”
Going to the edge of the wag, Ryan jumped to the ground. It was only a yard, but he went to a knee. Slowly standing, he flexed his muscles, checking for any unusual aches. But he felt fine. Just weak.
In short order, the rest of the companions joined him on the ground, stretching and cracking their joints.
“Okay, let’s recce the place,” Ryan suggested, drawing, leveling the Steyr.
With their weapons at the ready, the companions walked slowly around the campsite, checking into each of other wag. They expected to find corpses inside, blood splatter, or spent brass, but all of the buckboard wagons were empty, aside from some neatly rolled bedding and wicker baskets full of camping gear. Supplies for a dozen people. Adults, no children.
“The people are gone, but the horses remain,” J.B. said, adjusting his fedora to a more comfortable position. “Can’t be slavers or cannies, or they’d also have taken us, too.”
“Yeah, I don’t like this,” Ryan stated, sucking on a hollow tooth. “Either, the travelers went to some place so close that horses weren’t needed or...”
“Yes?” Mildred asked hopefully.
But the man merely shrugged in reply.
“Tether line for twelve horses,” Jak said, pointing. “One missing.”
“Okay, the boss rode while the others walked behind,” Mildred stated, resting the stock of the M-16 on a hip. “That sounds like a hunting party.”
“Or another rescue,” Ryan said.
“From the condition of the campfire, I’d say our hosts left about an hour ago, maybe less?”
“Sounds right,” Ryan said. “The second group, anyway.”
“The only reason the guard would leave,” Krysty said slowly, testing the words, “would be to check on the others of their group.”
“Left because we not kin,” Jak stated, straightening his jacket. Flexing his hands, knives dropped into his palms. He flipped them once in the air, then returned the knives up the sleeves.
“I’m liking this less all the time,” J.B. said, swinging around his shotgun to check the load. “We better find these folks fast, before they’re riding the last train west.”
“Or worse,” Doc grumbled, leaning on his swordstick.
“That loads my blaster,” Ryan stated, scratching under his eyepatch for a moment.
Apparently, even the old leather had been cleaned, but there was a soapy residue left behind that was itching like crazy. Removing the patch, Ryan spit on the leather and rubbed it clean on his pants before putting it back. Much better.
“First thing, we need to rebuild the campfire,” J.B. said. “The sun is already low in the sky, and we’ll need some sort of a guide to find this place again in the dark.”
“Done,” Doc said, limping away.
“Exactly where are we, anyway?” Mildred asked. “Is this still New Hampshire?”
Extracting the mini-sextant from under his shirt, J.B. shot the sun, split the horizon and did some rough mental calculations. “Still in New Hampshire,” he announced. “Just a little farther east than we intended to go.”
“The location changes nothing,” Ryan growled, working the arming bolt on the Steyr. “The travelers saved our butts, so let’s return the favor. Everybody sweep the perimeter, standard two-on-two formation. Let’s find their tracks.”
“Or tracks of who took,” Jak said, “but left us.”
Softly, thunder rumbled into the nearby mountains, and lighting flashed between the dense orange clouds.
“Rain coming,” J.B. muttered, shaking the excess water off his glasses. “I don’t smell sulfur so it’s probably not acid rain.”
“But we better hurry or the tracks will be washed away,” Krysty added as lightning flashed in the distance.
Sweeping the perimeter of the campsite, the tracks were easy to find, the travelers obviously not attempting to hide them in any way.
Proceeding on foot, the companions covered a good mile through flowering fields and lush grasslands before spotting something over the horizon.
At first, it just seemed to be a weathervane a long distance away, but as they came closer it was soon apparent that the thing wasn’t a device for telling the direction of the wind.
“Those are propellers,” Mildred said in surprise. “But much too big for a helicopter....my God, is that a boat?”
“Ship,” Jak corrected as the bulk of the destroyer came into view.
Sticking straight up from the ground like a tent peg, the colossal Navy vessel rose several hundred feet into the air. Vines and creepers covered most of the ship, along with countless bird nests, the accumulated streaks of old feces effectively masking the structure.
“A battleship!” J.B. tilted back his fedora. “Man, oh man, if that’s even relatively intact, we can salvage all sorts of things.”
Studying the ground, Ryan scowled. “Jak, the horse trail and footprints lead straight here?”
“Both.”
“Okay, the first group went on a recce, or a salvage, makes no difference,” Ryan stated, studying the boat. “And when they were late coming back, the second group went to check on them, and also disappeared.”
“I smell a trap,” Doc stated with a dour expression. “Yet honor demands we find our unknown benefactors at any cost.”
“Or chill the bastards who aced them,” Krysty said in a stern tone.
“Without a doubt,” Mildred told her, “you are the most dangerous pacifist I have ever known.”
Walking along, Krysty thought about that for a moment. “Thank you?”
“Oh, you’re quite welcome, my friend.”
However, the battleship was a lot farther away than the companions had first guessed, the sheer size of the monolithic vessel throwing off their perspective.
The gently rolling fields of grass around the vessel had a familiar rippling pattern that told the companions this was more nukescaping. Scattered around the plants were rusted pieces of unrecognizable machinery that steadily got larger.
At the base of a low hillock, they found an old packhorse tethered to a stand of willow trees. A roan mare, the animal was standing with her head bowed, and she was foaming slightly at the mouth. The ground around the animal was bare of any grass, and even the bark of the tree had clearly been chewed by the starving animal.
Hurrying closer, Jack poured some water from a canteen into his palm, and let the mare lap a little.
“Not too much, or it’ll come back up,” Mildred warned.
“Know that,” Jak said, gently stroking the horse.
The mare was almost too weak to drink, but the water seemed to give her strength, and the young man fed her most of the canteen, a little at a time.
Meanwhile, Ricky and Doc ferried over several armloads of green grass and piled them at the base of the trees.
The mare nickered in delight at the food, then started munching away.
“The travelers expected to haul away something,” Krysty said, checking inside a saddlebag. “This is full of empty canvas bags.”
“Brass,” Ricky stated, as if that ended the discussion.
“A sage observation,” Doc rumbled, resting the M-16 on his shoulder. “Lord knows they have enough fish to fe
ed Poseidon, so they must be here for weaponry. But it could be the ship itself they desire. Predark metals are enormously stronger than anything a Deathlands smithy can forge with charcoal and a billows.”
“Yeah, better keep the packhorse tethered,” Ryan said, watching the area for anything suspicious. “We may need her for the ride back to the camp.”
J.B. looked at the colossal ship rising upward from just the other side of the hillock. This close, the companions could see that the battleship was relatively intact, just seriously crumbled, the middle span actually folded together like an accordion. The main blasters were still attached, but twisted around to point in crazy directions.
“Sure, we can handle whatever got the travelers,” he said softly, working the pump action of his M-4000 shotgun.
Assuming a defensive formation, the companions swept up the hillock, each pair watching the other.
Cresting the top, they crouched low to study the area beyond. Spreading in front of them was an obvious impact crater, the grass smooth and level for a hundred feet. Smack in the center of it rose the battleship, the prow deep underground.
“It must have fallen straight out of the sky after some Navy base got nuked,” Ryan added, cradling the Steyr.
Most of the battleship was covered in ivy, the companions tightening the grip on their weapons at the sight of any leafy vines. Countless small bird nests were clustered on every flat surface, especially what remained of the control island.
Incredibly, all of the glass in the windows was still present, demonstrating that they had to have been made of some sort of plastic, and not glass. But all were solid white from decades of accumulated avian excrement.
The remains of machine guns, radar dishes, and even the depth charges were still in place, just so heavily corroded their original shapes could be determined by sheer guesswork. Bright yellow lifeboats edged the deck, many of them swinging freely from old chains to creak softly as they swayed in the breeze.
“Why isn’t it crushed into the size of a pancake?” Ricky asked suspiciously.
“Anything from the modern Navy would have been,” Mildred said. “Satellites and speed were considered the best defense in my time.”